Snapshots
by Subia Jasmine
Summary: "Life's too short, John..." Vignettes and drabbles with a bunch of major and minor Saw characters, with prompts from a hat.
1. Cherished

Disclaimer: John, Jill, her clinic, Gideon, etc. do not belong to me.

A/N: Saw IV... why you have to do stupid retcon? Year of the Pig puts that flashback in either 1995 or 2007. My headcanon was that they had been together 5 years before Jill got pregnant, and also that they've been estranged for no more than 5 years. So, that means they met in 1990 or 2002, and the events of the Saw movies in that timeline take place either in 2000 or 2012. Anyone else in my generation feel uncomfortable writing pre-9/11 modern stories?

* * *

Strawberries - Don't Take This Personally - Lust

Jill didn't miss a day of work the whole year, and she fed on her own exhaustion because now she had another purpose too. Her steady voice gave roots to the precarious branches that were her patients, and she purged and cajoled and stayed on her feet until she fell asleep, and she never, could never, let her perfect mask of composure crack.

Then Jill came home and she laughed raucously and sobbed terribly and denied herself nothing. And her husband came home and spun her around his workshop and kissed and held and doted on her. And she let him, because she had made him happier than he ever thought he could be. John was a quiet man, whose smile was slow and thoughtful, and one day he would be the father whose son respects him without ever raising his voice. He could be shy and reclusive, and sparing with his touches. But now he made wooden clockworks and dolls and puppets for Gideon, and once a perfect little wooden train, with a blue-hatted conductor standing on top, and he laughed like a boy as he rolled it over Jill's rounded belly, and was rewarded with the tiniest flutter.

Before, his touches were incidental but there was almost a charge to them, an intensity, as though he willed her to understand. _I'm sorry... this is who I am, and I love you. I need my quiet and my workshop and I need you. I want to be alone but I want to know every day that you are here._ And he touched her face with his fingertips, and his eyes lit as he saw that she'd known all this the day they'd met.

***

"John."

He reached over his shoulder for her hand when he heard her voice. She put her hand on his face and turned it away from his work. In her palm was a tiny strawberry, still misshapen and green.

"It's time."

Spring. His eyes met hers. _But I'm afraid,_ they said, _but what if_. But then they drifted to the cradle in the corner, half covered by a sheet, that was already built. Jill looked at it too, and she smiled.

"Life's too short, John."

He kissed her palm.

"Cherish it."

"Cherish me," she told him, and drew his hand onto her belly, "and cherish us."

He lifted her into his arms.


	2. Rehearsal

Disclaimer: _Saw _does not belong to me, and therefore neither do Hoffman and Amanda (thank God).

* * *

Rope - Cross My Heart - This Way and That

There were no pulleys on this one, no way of raising or lowering. If she could get out she would drop, buckle, acid falling like rain on her head while she waited for death, for no one could help her this far underground.

But Kerry wasn't on their minds now.

There was a very small margin for error with the sedatives they used. For convenience they couldn't be administered constantly, and the dose that could be given without suspicion was small. Something powerful. And the stronger they were, the thinner the line became between kidnap and murder.

The dose wasn't on their minds either. John had the matter in hand. They took what they were given and they delivered.

But because of this thin line, they could leave nothing to chance. Once the subject was in the warehouse, every game had many moving parts to be assembled quickly. They had to be sure they could keep the subject safely asleep until they were restrained, secured, and rigged. They had to move quickly and avoid unnecessary injury. They had to have a system.

It was with poison in her eyes that Amanda eased herself once again onto her back on the stone floor. She tucked her hair into her collar to avoid the dust. Hoffman stooped and put his hands under her shoulders. She squirmed. He shook her impatiently.

"You're too stiff."

"I'm sore. You fuckin dropped me."

"Won't happen again," he picked up a short leather strap and tightened it around her wrists. She cursed under her breath as her scars pressed into each other. "Full dress. Work with me."

"John's office's got shotgun holes in the wall. I don't know what you did do it, I had it calibrated. Now it's on a fuckin hair trigger. Makes me look like an amateur." she hissed as he tightened a belt around her knees.

"This comes first. You know why. And you're not gonna make me tell you again." As she glared at him, he took the strap on her wrists and pulled her forward onto his shoulder. He jerked her knees forward with his gloved right hand. "Now _relax_, or I swear I'll knock you out against the door."

He could hear her teeth grinding as he heaved her over his shoulder, and carried her to the chains and iron bodice that awaited Kerry. He secured the chains around Amanda's hollow waist, then released the belt on her knees. She was securely suspended now, a foot off the floor, as he pulled the iron bodice around her and fastened the hooks into her shirt. He thought of the metal washers that would be around the ribs, fastening into this deadly corset like hooks and eyes

She kicked him. "Stop enjoying the view, Detective."

_What view_, he thought, his fingers found her ribs and fit between them with ease, _you're wasting away_...

"Fuck are you talking about?" she snarled when she was afraid. She was on her guard before he had touched her like he would a sleeper, when he'd cuffed and shackled her like the cop he'd left behind. Now he imagined the metal rings around her bones, and how it would feel to slip his fingers between them and pull.

Their eyes met. She had to struggle to keep the walls up behind hers. She knew what he was thinking.

He turned her loose."Time"

"Two minutes."

Pause. Eyes locked.

"It won't be long." he murmured, half to himself.

Her eyes crackled and blazed. "Is that a promise, Detective? Or a dare?"

He just shouldered the restraints.

_Cross my heart and hope to die._


	3. Recovery

Disclaimer: Brit and Mallick and their traps and et cetera do not belong to me.

* * *

Tumbling After - A Promise - Keeping Warm

She needs restraints and sedation for the second week in the hospital until her discharge.

_Patient is Caucasian female, age thirty-six, discovered delirious and bleeding heavily from left brachial artery in a meatpacking plant in downtown Columbus, injuries sustained include two severed fingers and near-total cleavage of left arm to mid-forearm. Class IV hemorrhage. Severe shock. Tissue and nerve damage severe. Patient statement identifies weapon as mounted circular saw blade..._

It is a long time before either of them opens their eyes.

_Patient is Caucasian male, age thirty-one, discovered unconscious and bleeding heavily from right brachial artery..._

And when they do, they ask if the other is alive. And then if they, themselves, are alive.

_Class IV hemorrhage. Grim prognosis..._

And when they are, they each smile and whisper, "We did it... we won... _we_ won..." and sink back into sleep, as though they fought back from death just to ask those questions.

_Muscle repair, tendon lengthening surgery, skin grafts, bone splints..._

When she opens her eyes again, she is told she was found ten days ago in the warehouse, that she is recovering from shock and what should have been fatal blood loss, and that she should expect to remain in the hospital for at least a month of recovery. And that her left forearm may need to be amputated if her body rejects grafts.

Everything from that night except his name is blurry or forgotten entirely. She remembers loud, metallic sounds and screaming and blood and his name.

When they next find her awake, she has elevated her bed and is sitting up straight, quivering and white but clear-eyed. More quietly than usual, she nevertheless asks for coffee in a voice underlied with steel. It is less a request than a delegation. Coffee. And Mallick. They bring her coffee without answering her questions. Panic begins to blur the present. Did she dream it when they said he was alive? She has to be force fed that day.

_Severe shock..._

"We did it... we won... _we won_..." he says, smiling in the relief of _we_. But as he drifts out of consciousness, he thinks that if her hand were there again on his, he wouldn't be so afraid that he might not wake up.

When he wakes up in the middle of the night, his right arm is numb and his head is spinning and he retches up bile into his pillow. He means to yell for the nurse, but even as she comes in, he is crying for Brit.

_Full recovery of muscle function..._

And one night she comes. She staggers around his door and sinks onto his bed, dizzy and breathless from the move, and he holds up his water to her mouth as she runs her right fingers down his face.

"Hey, trooper," she breathes.

"Hey, captain," he manages. And then they both need to lie down and be perfectly still, because moving at all makes their heads spin, and what could they need to say? She lies down next to him on her right side, her cast and bandaged and ruined left crooked, useless, on her hip, and they hold each other's eyes for a long time.

They have to restrain her after that, because she will reopen every wound to have his eyes be the last thing she holds onto as she slips into darkness.

_And recovery of sensation..._

They leave the hospital with their whole hands joined, and they do not let go until they reach Brit's condo. He comes up without either of them asking, and they fall asleep with each whole hand on the other's waist.

He does not go home. She does not go back to work. They do not talk very much, but order food and read the paper and have only two hands between them to rebuild two shattered lives as one whole one.

They spend many nights together pretending to sleep, each pretending not to notice that the other is wide awake and shaking with the fear of closing their eyes.

_In forearm, hands, and fingers..._

Until the bloody patchwork arms heal, they must sleep face-to-face. The light often stays on all night as they lay quiet, or count the seconds and minutes out loud in whispers as they pass. _It's one less minute until morning... one hour less till morning... morning's coming Brit... it will always come... and when it comes we'll watch it on the terrace and we can be in the sun all day and not have to say a word..._

And every night, it feels as though it will never come again. But they hold each other tight as night leaches their blood and splinters their bones and they count the seconds until sunrise. And after a year of sunrises they start to believe that day will come even if they do not watch and count and wait for it.

_Highly unlikely..._

He saved her, because he would not kill her. She saved him, because she would not let him be killed. She pinned his hand and held it in a vice even while she had her eyes shut tight, fiercely saying over and over _you are not alone... I am not alone... you are not alone_...

_If you die, so will I_.

"We did it... _we won_..." they said over and over, trying to keep each other awake, and then alive, and then patched, and then eating and drinking and sleeping and healing.

And then, a long time later, loving.


	4. Sweet Tea

Disclaimer: _Saw_ is not mine, and by extension John Kramer and Jill Tuck are not mine either.

A/N: This site: , gives groups of writing prompts from a bunch of lists titled with bunnies and ice cream flavors. These chapters have groups of 3 prompts each.

* * *

Top Shelf - Umbrella - An Order

Jill was thirty-five years old, and she hadn't lived below the Mason-Dixon line for a long time.

Her ex-husband used to call it "brown kool-aid," and he pulled a face when she steeped in their freezer for guests in summertime. She'd lost her accent as quick as she could, but her one and eternal southern vice was sweet tea. Bartenders gave her suspicious looks when she slipped up and said "tea and whiskey," remembering that only below Mason-Dixon was it chilled by default.

But Jessi knew her. She had been a patient at the Cherish clinic, and now that Jill was not her doctor, she spoiled her. She came by the clinic with her wedding ring to give Jill a card and a kiss, she'd come on slow days and helped with rounds, she'd even offered to sponsor Amanda Young, a girl barely out of her teens who'd been off the program twice in six months. And when Jill frequented her bar she grinned at her and set a kettle boiling in the back.

She leaned over the bar for a tight, one-armed hug when they caught each other's eye, "Sorry_ salvadora_, Linda called out sick and I'm swamped."

"Take your time _carina_, I'm early."

"Coke while it's steeping?" she was already pouring it and filling it with cherries and oranges, and Jill waved in assent.

Jessi's hoop earrings flounced as she hurried sideways along the bar. The bar was small and easily crowded, but she had many familiar hands to brush and quick kisses to blow as she sidestepped with the drinks. Jill sipped her soda and watched her with wistful pride.

She'd known from the beginning she was destined for heartbreak, for the kind of numbers that horrify "real" doctors, for failure five, ten, twenty times over before someone like Jessi came into her life. Jessi was a college dropout who had started on Adderall and Modafinil for tests, and by the time she was expelled in her sophomore year, was hooked on cocaine and had not slept in weeks. She came to the clinic in the throes of withdrawal and cowered in Jill's office from terrible hallucinations, and for the first few weeks she refused to even give Jill her name. But she came every day, and sat resolutely in the chair in the corner right beside Jill's office. Then one day she had arrived, looking exhausted and battered but clear-eyed, walked up to Jill and said, as though forcing it out before she lost her nerve, "My name is Jessica, and I want to be a mom more than anything in the world, and I don't want them to have an addict for a mother. Tell me what to do."

That day was five years ago tonight.

Jessi's silver-ringed hand plucked a cherry out of her coke and knotted the stem with her tongue as she set a frosted glass of sweet tea in front of Jill. As she ducked behind the bar for honey whiskey, Jill said, "Get us tequila while you're there, _carina_."

"Don't tell me you're giving up on Tennessee," came her muffled voice, as she emerged with the two bottles. Jill smiled, took the two lime quarters from the rim of her glass, and handed one to Jessi. The girl's face was shining.

"Five years." They toasted.

"And you thought I forgot." Jill chided as she tossed her spent lime back into her coke and mixed. Jessi wiped her eyes on her apron.

"By the way," said the girl conspiratorially, leaning forward on the bar as Jill swigged, "You're gonna have company in a minute, but he says he wants to wait till you're done with that."

"He?" Jill swallowed her mouthful. Jessi tilted her head towards a man at the end of the bar, with graying hair and very blue eyes whom Jill thought looked slightly familiar. She smiled, "What for?"

Jessi thwapped her on the head with a paper umbrella from the garnish tray, "Probably because he wants to buy you another one. I told him you don't pay here, so now he's interested why Johnny passed me a kettle of boiling water for you over his head."

She skated back down the bar, refilling glasses, pocketing tips, dropping her elbows on the bar to stare directly into the eyes of her regulars, giving jokes and rejoinders and finally leaning in front of the man toying with his glass of wine. The man answered her very quietly for a minute, keeping his eyes on his glass, and then rose and walked slowly to the seat beside Jill. He cleared his throat.

"May I?" his voice was hoarse, and quiet, and formal. When she waved he sat down, their bodies at open angles. "I hope I don't come across as rude, but I've... I've been looking for somebody interesting to talk to."

"And you're wondering who the bartender almost scalded you for?"

The man smiled, "And who she was so excited to see. I've..." he hesitated, "Seen you here before. A few times. Jessica is a charming young woman, but you seem to be more than a good customer to her." he paused, "Excuse me."

Jill eyed him curiously. "We go back awhile." the man was watching her intently, "It's... kind of a long story." she sipped her tea and whiskey.

"I see," he said, after a pause, and he sipped from his own glass. He held out his hand, "My name is John."

"Jill," she responded, holding out her hand.

He shook it very gently, "Kramer."

She smiled, "Tuck."

"Well, Miss Jill Tuck," he rolled the words in his mouth with the last of his wine. She liked how her name sounded in his rusted and curious voice. "It would... be my honor, if I could sit here and talk with you for a while. Will you let me do that?"

"I don't see why not, Mister John Kramer." she sipped again, and his eyes followed her head back and watched her swallow. He liked the low modulations of her voice, and as she paused to drink he found he wanted her to speak again.

"Now what is that, exactly, and why did it come in a boiling kettle?" John pointed at her drink.

"Oh, this is sweet tea," she dug up the familiar twang from under a decade of suppression, "and it's far too sweet for anyone but us southern belles. My ex-husband used to call it brown kool aid."

"Some people have no appreciation for the refined things in life."

"Refinement ain't why the boys pick the Georgia peaches. Then again, that's why he's an ex," Sip. _What about you? You have an appreciation for sweet blood?_

Jessi was back, and John was saying, "I think I would like... to try one of these next, please." Jessi looked taken aback, "If it isn't too much trouble."

"No, no, as long as Jill doesn't mind sharing," and she mixed him one on the spot. She set it in front of him and, leaning in to Jill, said, "I need to eat, _salvadora_, I'm dead on my feet, but Rosie's coming in for takeover."

They both watched as Johnny came out of the kitchen with two burgers, a very small girl trotting after him with a half apron tied around her neck. Jessi exclaimed as Savannah grabbed on to her leg, "Have you been helping cook, pretty girl?" and she lifted her up and hugged her tightly while the girl giggled. Over her mother's shoulder, she spotted Jill.

"Jill!" she cried, waving with both arms.

"Hey baby," Jill grinned, "you get more beautiful every day..."

"I can't wait till tomorrow!" Savannah said delightedly with her.

Jill turned away and she took a larger sip of her drink than she had meant to, and coughed. John made a movement he seemed to think better of.

"How old is she?" he asked.

"She'll be four next month. Isn't she sweet?" John just watched Jessi tuck Savannah's napkin into her collar, so Jill thought it went unnoticed when she whispered, "I'm so glad she has her."

John turned back to her quickly.

"I just mean... she's a good mother."

"It does seem so," John mused, then, "_Salvadora_?"

"Yea, it's her nickname for me, and it's part of a long story."

"Well," he was still musing, "I have time."

She smiled, "That's sweet of you. I meant it's only half my story to tell. At least, not over drinks on a first pick-up."

"Of course." he inclined his head graciously, "But perhaps if, at the end of our conversation, you were inclined to... meet me another time. I have a great deal of time. Too much, sometimes. And I would be... very happy to share some of it with a beautiful woman who has half of a long story to tell."

As Jessi locked up at the end of the night, she folded Jill in her arms and, kissing her on the cheek, she whispered, "_You better invite me to your wedding_."


	5. Bound

Disclaimer: Amanda, John, and the unnamed Hoffman and Jill are not mine.

* * *

Subservience - The Last Word - A Compliment

They were like code, for the most part. A series of rapid-flashing ones and zeros with as little defined shape as a constellation. They were meticulously noted and subject to careful interpretation. Sharp blue eyes saw no expression, merely electrical impulses, nerves, stimulus and responses. Fear as a chemical product tied in no meaningful way to survival, outlived it's usefulness. They were waves of energy, whiffs of ozone, blips on a screen, and then they were left aside in their misery.

Paul, Mark, Adam... Chameleon, Catus, Cassiopeia... 1010011010...

He watched through monitors and peepholes and had only an academic tug to be proven wrong about them all. His disappointment was clinical, his sorrow extended to a thesis.

Michael, Lawrence, Zep... Orion, Octus...

But she won when he had started to be become cynical. She was against the odds and here she stood, whole and pure. He watched her withdraw her powder from the drawer beside her mattress and pour it down the drain. She arranged herself on her bed as though she had glass joints, flipped open her lighter, and began to run her fingers through the flame.

"Hello, Amanda."

She lunged herself up and threw her lighter, flying off the bed and stumbling against her table, sprawling and scrambling to a standing position. He had to sedate her to make himself heard. Her vision swam, and then her screams were whimpers. He picked up the sobbing girl and replaced her against her headboard, sat down next to her with his hand on her ankle, and waited for her to be still. When they still called him John, he would have been troubled by how very young she was.

"Don't be afraid," his hand tightened very slightly on her and her eyes rolled back into focus, onto his face, "I'm not here to hurt you,"  
She tried shakily to sit up.

"Most people are so _ungrateful_ to be alive." he continued, "They waste the time they have with lies and cruelty and deceit, they take every advantage they are given for granted, they abuse their bodies and their souls. And when I test _them_, Amanda, they do not succeed. They burn alive, or they tangle in razor wire and bleed like a pincushion, or they will not sacrifice what they never knew they had. They cough up blood and acid and all their lives they've forced the poison down the throats of others. It sickens me."

She hadn't wet her bed in twenty years. She'd bargained with sex and mutilation and been at gunpoint for money and drugs and she was good at hiding her fear. But all that had been poured down the drain.

"And now it will sicken you too, Amanda. You will see the people you once counted friends squandering everything they stand to gain from a new life like yours, and they will _repulse_ you."

Her eyes were wide now, darting between his own and seeing only sorrow and majesty. It terrified her worse than hot rage or cold fury.

"When I told you to make a choice, Amanda, you chose life. And I am here to offer you another one." he withdrew an envelope bearing her name from his pocket, and placed it on the bed beside her trembling hand, "In that envelope is everything you need to know about that choice... and its consequences. I will wait for one week, and rest assured I am well protected. That is not a threat, the police are finally putting my puzzle together and I instructed you to keep yourself alive. But it is a promise from now forward."

She clutched the envelope tightly in her shaking hand, crushing it to an accordion. She stared at him unblinkingly. He released his grip on her.

"One week. Make your choice."

* * *

She is followed to the address he had given her, pushed through the door and searched briskly by a man with a gun and few words.  
"Hello," she says simply. He appraises her, her choppy hair and her painful glass bones. Her frailty hides sinews that run deep, and the death and hopelessless in her eyes has been hiding fire. She crackles like a new fire, he can feel the heat of her decision as she takes several, deliberate steps toward him. He lets her flex her claws. "I'm in."

"You will have to make sacrifices."

"I don't care."

"You should," a note of urgency enters his voice, "You must understand the consequences of carrying out my work. You must leave your heart behind you," he steps to her, "and you must give yourself to me, every cell in your body. Do you understand that?"

There is barely a beat. "Yes."

"If I ask you rig a man into a death mask, and I tell you his name, you will do as I say?"

"Yes."

"If I forbid you to interfere, you will obey me?"

"Yes," the burning in her eyes is gaining in strength.

"And if a subject fails to follow the rules, you will leave them to die?"

A pause. She swallows.

"Your word, Amanda."

"Yes."

He nods. This is a debriefing, an orientation of the methods they will use, or at least the parts she will be responsible for. He has two of them now, and their responsibilities must be divided according to strength. He has work to do to prepare her, and he begins to turn away.  
And then the new fire throws caution to the wind, and reaches out for his arm. He turns back to face her, impassive. She does not snatch her hand away, and she meets his eyes for a blinding instant.

"I made you a promise," she says, her voice has a strange, feverish undercurrent.

"You did."

She raises her eyes for a moment longer, "Are you gonna make me one?"

He considered her, "The man who accompanied you here is an officer. He is key in my protection and discretion, and yours too. You will be in danger, I promise you that, but we will not be found out prematurely."

"Good." she says, ignoring the implication, "But that's not what I want."

"Well?"

She keeps her eyes just under his as she slowly removes her jacket. He sees the track marks, stitches and bruises and thickets of collapsed veins, but then he sees her indicating an embossed mark on her shoulder, a small, raised star of scar tissue. He begins to understand.

"Someone gave you that."

She nods, "And she bled on it. And we couldn't break our promise, because it was to us too."

He watches in silence as she draws a small straight razor from her pocket and begins to trace along the track marks.

"These are from my old life, all of these."

She sets the blade on her wrist, and risks another glance into his eyes, then makes a neat, precise cut, like a sideways figure-eight.

Infinity.

Very slowly, she holds out her hand. When there is a swelling of blood on his own hand, he reaches for the girl's wrist and clasps it tight. There is a strange expression in his face that has been absent for a long time.

"I promise." she intones softly. _Disciple, student, apprentice, daughter_... the precise words do not mean very much just now.

There is a charge between them as he feels her blood against his fingers, "I promise," he says. _To teach, to share, to guide, to cherish._.. not very long ago, he promised another woman these things, and so he keeps them silent now and lets the moment speak.

And now there is something understood that cannot be unknown. And she will not leave her heart behind when she gives everything to him.

And he prays at this moment that he will not have to watch it destroy her


	6. Ring, Gun, Key

Disclaimer: They ain't mine, but I'm going to continue to borrow them for my own purposes for awhile longer.

* * *

Out Of The Ashes - The Whole Truth - Baked In A Pie

My name is Corbett. Corbett Padma Banai-Denlon. My family is dead. My mother was buried without her face. I know I saw her, because my grandfather said I smashed jars on the shelves in the morgue, and now it's hard for me to squeeze my hands closed. I have her wedding ring.  
My brother took my father with him. I have one of his toys, a cow, old and ragged and graying, that my father cursed at me if he found me with it, or near it. If he'd died in his sleep, I could have gone into my brother's room, wrapped myself in his blankets and looked at his pictures and cried myself out, no matter how long it took, no matter if I didn't stop crying before my heart stopped beating.

But my father didn't like me crying. Because he wasn't crying. And he said he was the only one who'd lost him. I hadn't made him, I hadn't raised him, my mother hadn't taught him to ride a bike or been home for his first steps or watched him die. But my father never told me not to drink, or smash mirrors, or threaten shadows and reflections with a bullet in the head. And I've always taken what my father didn't say seriously.

My father...

I have his gun.

I wasn't supposed to trust you. You're the reason I was left with nothing but a stuffed animal and a ring and a gun and rooms stripped bare. The car struck the match, the man lit the fuse, the pawn was the fire and my parents were straw, collateral damage in a siege. But what was I? What was I ever? I am attrition. The siege hasn't ended.

I have my mother's hands. I have her ring around the rosie of our lives. It doesn't fit me yet.

My heart is skipping every other beat as I follow her down the rabbit hole and we lose all light. She doesn't have a flashlight. She doesn't want the others to know she's here. She doesn't want the others to know she's showed me this place, even in the pitch dark. But she's good and sure-footed, and she takes my hand and pulls me around countless corners that never cancel out, staircase after staircase that makes the silence press down on us. If she lets me go now I might die here.

But she's taking me to you, so I hold on tight.

_Sing a song of sixpence_, my mother's voice croons in my head, _a pocketful of rye, four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie..._

Blackbirds stay together their whole lives, unless she doesn't breed. The male gives threat displays and the female watches with passive contempt. They live apart. The male drinks and the female does not lift her head. The male breaks windows and cocks his gun at the sound of his daughter coming downstairs, and the female finds other mates. The female dies without a face. The male a shell.

By the time my eyes adjust to the darkness, she's dropped my hand in front of a heavy, rusted warehouse door, and unlocks it with a key on her necklace. Her body bends like a cutlass as she heaves on the peeling iron handle, and the smell of rotten bodies and a thicker, more sinister darkness hit us as the door slides open. She takes my hand again, and she knows where to step as skeletons emerge on the floor, the flesh oozing into puddles. When she sees me stopping to retch she holds a jar under my nose, pulls me further forward. The door seems to shrink to a pinpoint, though we can't be more than fifteen feet inside. She holds out her arm, puts her finger to my lips, and sinks down to the filthy, bloodied floor. She strikes a match.

And here you are at last. She sets her candle on the bloodstained floor next to you, pulls back her hood, and shakes the rust from her long hair.

"Hello, Detective," Diana Gordon whispers. She holds the candle up to your face so I can see the thin slivers of blue as you stir. I never know whether you had time to recognize the girl who won you your medal, Detective, the next thing I'm aware of are Diana's arms around me, catching me from the recoil. She takes the gun, puts it into the tank of the filthy toilet, and then we are up the rabbit hole, and she is pressing the key to your tomb into my hand.

And then she's gone, and I'm alone, with a stuffed animal and a house of stripped rooms, and a ring, and a key. And your blood.

I don't throw the key away. I put in on the chain with my mother's wedding ring.


	7. Working

Disclaimer: So Adam popped up and decided he wanted some fluff. He's not mine though, and neither is Addison.

* * *

Third Wheel - Now You've Done It - Focus

He's tailing breezily, on a bike across the street from the mark, a short, sweaty corporate douche whose short, dumpy corporate drone wife wanted pictures of him getting sucked off by hookers. They don't pay him enough for this shit. Just once, let these guys be a drug kingpin or run a trafficking cartel or elope with his fucking hamster. Hell, even somebody it would be fun to shoot.

The mark is wiping his fat, shiny face and flapping his suit jacket and looking around shiftily, but Adam's got good zoom and he hangs back as the guy tries to wander casually into an alley. He doesn't see Adam. Adam snorts. He's seen it all, bribing the desk clerk, hiring their own PI, calling the cops on a harassment charge, changing cars, and enough guys trying to nonchalantly chat up hookers and innocently disappear into the alley or a seedy motel room for blow and blowjobs to last him a lifetime._ So your marriage is over, asshole. Calm your tits, you're not interesting enough for jail_.

He snaps pictures that follow the guy around the corner, then he stops at a convenience store and props his bike against the brick wall, locking it to a lamppost. He wanders across the street. It's late, but there's some partiers that buffet him and make him vanish to the poor, doughy schmuck haggling in the shadows. He figures he's safe, Adam thinks, because nobody saw him leave the house. _That's what you think._ He grins. The guy's not thinking with his head. He's a guy, they all know the feeling.

He just needs a couple more pictures, at least the dick deciding on a hole, but he doesn't have to stay for the whole thing. He's still gotta watch the guy's wife deny away until she gets to a juicy picture, and then he's gotta let her yell and scream and rip her hair out before she remembers to pay him. It's a long night. So he buys a few shitty coffees at the dingy old donut shop and then slips in between the buildings.

"Evening ladies," he grins, fiddling the flash and getting a few pictures of the pretty ones' tits. He can't shoot their faces, cause sometimes he works for cops and these girls are ok, really. They've seen him around, they won't rough him up and sometimes he gets a free one if he brings food. "Busy night?"

They take the coffee and the older ones say "thanks, sugar" and he gets a few pictures of the mark pulling down his pants. Come on, at least let her be a drag queen? Nah, it's just Cheryl with her stripper blonde hair and chipped pink nails. He tells the girls to save a coffee for her, the guy's limp as a noodle.

He got one with cream and sugar, and he holds it out to a latin chick with wavy brown hair way down her back, "Hey, Addi."

"Hey gorgeous," Addison grins slyly at him. She's his favorite of this crowd, she gets his jokes and she's got one hell of a tongue. Once or twice he's had a real good job and bought her dinner from the halal cart and they walked around, just talking about punk music while they ate their gyros.

"How often's that fat fuck here, Addi?"

She downs half her coffee in one, "Once or twice a week. Think he'd start finding new ground now there's a pretty PI on his tail." she belches spectacularly.

"Yea, Gumshoe Stanheight. All fat boring wifecheaters and potsmokers, beware the mighty flash of justice!" he sets his flash on high and starts snapping pictures of Addison, bobbing up and down while she slaps at him.

"Oh yea," she says, flipping through the replays, "This'll make some good beat off material tonight. I forgot you get off on blurry faces and fat asses."

"That's me, blurry and juicy, something I can sink my teeth into."

She rummages in his pocket for a cigarette and he lights it with the end of his. They lean against the wall in silence for a few minutes, smoking. Then the bar starts to empty out across the street. Adam snaps a few last, quick pictures of the mark, then pulls out another cigarette and tucks it behind Addison's ear before he lets her go to work.

"Gyros tomorrow, I got a gig for $300 a night and I'm jonesing for Greek."

"Kay." She grinds her cigarette into the ground and pats his ass, "Later, dickhead."

"Aight, fuck you slutbag." he waves and jogs back to his bike.


	8. Pride

A/N: Little placeholder chapter, where Amanda does not kill Lynn. Neither John, Amanda, Jeff, Lynn, nor anyone else you recognize belongs to me.  
HEY BUT ALSO, says there have been 150 views on this story :) but only 1 review :( If you read, I'd love a review, even if it's just a few words. And I will review a thing of yours in return.

* * *

Tattoo - Unexpected - Bated Breath

What John whispered, she obeyed. She threw the key to the outside door into Lynn's hands, but she fumbled and it fell to the floor. She had to scramble carefully, and not knock against the chair or bed. While she searched, Amanda kept her gun on the door.

"Amanda," said John softly. Her eyes flashed to him, but she kept her muzzle trained on the door, prepared for who would come through it. His face was paper white from bloodloss, but he was clinging to the moment with clawlike strength. "Amanda," he called, more urgently. She moved to his side and took one hand off her gun, and placed it in his. It took all his strength to reach across to her and push her gun arm feebly down. "It's ok, Amanda... It's ok, put it down now."

She turned, startled, and looked down into his parchment face and blue eyes, in which a piercing spark still flickered. She was struck by the gentleness of his tone. "John?"

There was something odd in his face she had not been expecting. She was better than most at reading her mentor, but she could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen his expression on any face.

It was pride. John's eyes were shining. "This was your test. Your game."

His fingers were inching to her wrist, where the infinity mark had been carved months ago. He drew the mark to his lips and kissed it gently. She had pieced together her puzzle, she had two victories. She was ready, and he had never been so proud to be proven wrong.

The kiss made what she had meant to say stick in her throat. "John..." she managed.

His eyes searched her troubled face, but as she struggled to meet his eyes he clasped her hand tightly. "It doesn't matter, Amanda."

"Yes it does."

"No." he insisted. He put his hand beneath her chin. "You remember what you promised me?"

"That I was yours," she whispered, tears threatening in her eyes, "Every cell in my body."

"And you began a new life. Your past became my past, your failings my responsibility, your victory my success. And so whatever it is you think you've done, I already know, and I've already made peace. Because it's mine."

There was a disturbance at the door. Someone was calling out to the woman rooted to the spot beside the hospital bed, key in hand, stunned into silence.

"Right on time," John remarked, his hand still on Amanda's arm. She raised her gun. "Amanda..."

"This key," forestalled Amanda, pulling it out from beneath her shirt and dangling it before the panting man who, a second before, had blundered through the curtain and seized Lynn around the waist, "Jeff!" she said sharply, as they embraced. He turned. "Drop your gun. You're not done yet."

He started to raise it to her neck. Amanda swayed the key to and fro on her splayed hand. "You need this key to get her out of here alive. Drop your gun." As he moved it instead to John, Lynn's eyes widened in terror and she seized her husband's arm. Finally, he obeyed, and slid the gun on the floor to Amanda. She put the collar key into John's hand. "Now, pay attention to what he tells you, because you need to make a choice."

She slid both pistols into her waistband, and she turned to John, who said, in his softest voice yet, "Thank you, Amanda. Take your envelope, and go to work. What we need to discuss must be done in private."

Her brow furrowed. She did not like leaving John alone. But back in his eyes was the stony expression that meant she had past her point of choice in the proceedings. Things would go according to John's plan, and he had not confided it because he knew she would not like it. Just as the conclusion was forming in her mind, John seized her wrist.

"Amanda," he had begun to plead, "Trust me, and go. You will know what to do."

She was stepping backward without conscious thought. A numb mist seemed to be spreading through her body, chilling her limbs and casting dim shadows over her eyes. She was taking a last look as they locked eyes through the screen.

She saw him mouth the words.

_"Game Over_."


	9. Survive

A/N: So this scene depends on that last chapter happening, so please pretend it did. No, I haven't figured out how Lynn not being murdered affects all of canon forever. Please review if you read, even if it's short!

Non-explicit kismesissitude here between Amanda and Hoffman.

* * *

A Cunning Plan - The First Time - Lost

Amanda walked swiftly down through the labyrinth of hallways. She couldn't run. She needed to be calm, sedate, logical. John was his own greatest subject, and they all knew one day someone would fail their game to his cost. The mask, the cloak and dagger, the legacy, accepted this long ago. But the woman who had felt him kiss the blood bind on her arm, who had seen his eyes shining with pride for her, who knew that he had sent her away so she would not betray him, wanted to run hard into the walls, beating her fists and her head until she blinded herself with blood.

So she walked in circles and let the gaping truth freeze her blood and swallow her whole. She walked blindly down staircases and through doors, caring only slightly not to walk through doors she knew were rigged and dangerous. _You'll never see him again_, she said over and over, _he's counting on you. You won't let him down. You can't let him down_. She crouched against a wall and yanked her hair until her scalp ached and burned. _His blood is your blood. Part of you died, but part of him lived_.

Only now that she stepped through the splintered door over fragments of bullet-riddled glass did she realize where she had led herself. She locked eyes with the man on the seesaw, covered in fragments of his partner's flesh and blood, and shook her head. _Survive him_.

There were two bodies bleeding from gunshot wounds on the floor. One was still moving, a young and lean-muscled cop she'd seen on the news, whom Hoffman was looking at stonily, holding his gaze as the man bled out. Amanda's brow creased. She nudged the man's chisled shoulder with her boot. He writhed as he turned his head to get her in view. She drew her gun and trained it on his head.

"Say please," she told him quietly, as his dark face turned ashen. As the man groaned, her eyes swiveled to Hoffman. She emptied her gun into Rigg's head. _Survive him, survive him_, she echoed as she looked at the passionless face she hated. Then she tightened the loose strap around Hoffman's left arm, and swung herself across his knees.  
_  
Amanda, you were with Cecil the night Jill lost Gideon. You killed their child. You know it, and I know it, so do exactly as I say. Kill Lynn Denlon, or I will tell John what you did._

She read his note out loud, and held it in front of his eyes. She struck a match, set the paper ablaze, and let it crumble to ash in her hand. She blew the cinders into his face. Then she ripped the gag out of his mouth. She saw patches rubbed red around his lips, and she smiled mechanically. They would match, if she had not survived worse.

"Tell him whatever you want, Detective."

His tongue darted to the raw corners of his mouth, "So it was just you."

"We were all supposed to die," she said in a deadly whisper.

"But there were a few loose ends." his voice was so low it could barely be distinguished from the whirring of the fan. The air was thick with fresh blood. Every hunters' instinct in both of them was sharpened.

"Best laid plans." she was still kneeling on him, balanced precariously on his legs.

"You know how to tie off loose ends, Amanda," he said, after a pause. The menace in his voice was as tangible as the blood in the air. A charge seemed to surge through her as her hands clamped on his arms. He was leaning forward, straining against the straps, and she could not evade without falling backward. "Are you out of bullets?"

She did not stand to take aim. When the second passed, he would be safe, for now. When it did, he took the neck of her flimsy shirt in his teeth and drew it down over her shoulder, scraping along her skin, over the sheen of sweat from the terror of the last few hours. "Take this off," she looked at the strap on his arm, back into his eyes glinting with challenge and mockery.

Her grief was still fresh, her fear and defiance, her victory... She had always been wary of him, distrustful, jealous, afraid, aroused. He set her nerves on edge. But when she thought of him before, John had been with her. Guiding her. Protecting her.

She had not dreamed it would come down to them. But just now, she wasn't going to kill him. She loosened the belt two notches, and then left him to work himself free. She unfolded herself off him, stood, and watched him struggle with forced equanimity. _Survive him... survive him_...  
That would have been the moment to be afraid, while he was pulling himself carefully out of his restraints. His eyes weren't on her. She got her back against a wall and forced herself to breathe slow, to think of John, to center and distill her thoughts. His blood was hers. The work would continue, and this man could not scare her away. She wasn't going anywhere.

Hoffman stood up from the wheelchair, rolled his wrists, kicked the brake and stepped down off the balance. With the shift in weight, the ragged severed neck of Eric Matthews slipped out of the chain, and he toppled off his block of ice with a sickening crunch. A week ago she would have flinched, and she knew he was waiting, watching. _Stand your ground. Don't challenge. Know_. He moved deliberately toward her, and she stood deliberately still, her arms determinedly loose at her sides, her chin level. Her face wasn't yet John's, all instilling silence and dispassionate perception. But his eyes would never be John's, all the life in them was gone, and all the blood in the world would not restore it. He saw her as frail, weak, what had died in him conquered what had died in her. But now they stood eye to eye, and so horribly and painfully alive, and her rouge arrogance was being harnessed and channelled, a spark and not a fracture in her brown eyes.

Amanda was beginning to judge. Hoffman was beginning to fear.

He was right in front of her. Neither of them leaned, moved their arms, opened their bodies yet. She hadn't replaced her sleeve.

"What happens now?"

He scoffed. She rolled her eyes. Amanda reemerged through the façade. Then both her hands and his went for her belt, and she slapped his away. Instead he found places on her neck, her shoulders, her face to dig his fingers into as she fumbled and he watched, making her curse, and hiss, and scratch his arms with jagged nails. Then she groped at him with the kind of open ferocity that had made him sure she would fail. He had been so sure he would be able to reach his hands into that weakness and tear her in half. He buried his fingers in her cunt and felt bone encircling his hand, felt her muscles protest, and then her lips were at his ear, mocking him "_Are you out of bullets_?" and he hit her hard across the mouth. She stumbled, but as she sank to the floor she began to laugh.

Then she twisted her scratched, calloused and powder-grit hand into his shirt and tore him down. Buttons ripped as he slammed her against the floor and pinned her there, his hands like a vice around her ribs. If they could forget will, he could crush her. But will was too complicated, and it was the reason their work must continue. He had threatened, and she had brought a challenge. He had to meet it.  
_  
You think you will walk away untested..._

"You tell me what happens now," he growled against her, pressing his mouth to her throat.

She dragged him off her neck by his hair and sparks met sparks. She dug her nails into his face, and he forced inside her, not giving up hope that he could make her scream.  
_  
Survive him_.

Amanda leaned forward and slowly kissed her enemy with surprising gentleness. They would kill each other in the end, and she made her opening move. She nuzzled her jaw against his face, and breathed one word.  
_  
"War."_


	10. Changeling

A/N: I was never sure why Hoffman and his sister had different last names (hers is in the credits as 'Acomb', hence Acorn in the story), since neither of them is married (for that matter, so do William and Pamela). So for my purposes she is adopted. Hoffman and Angelina do not belong to me.  
Also, 200 views but no reviews :( Reviews will make me stop frowning. Please review? With sugar on top?

* * *

Don't Try This At Home - That's What Little Girls Are Made Of - Letting Go

Everyone else called her Ange when she was little. She was a blur of color and tramping paint and trailing beads and laughter like a gale, and you had to catch her with as few syllables as possible. You didn't waste words around her, because she was from and in another world. It was a diminutive their mother used as she scooped up the girl from the brambles, four letters conveying the scolding, exhausted love for the little tempest she had taken in.

Her son had spoiled her. He had hardly ever cried, had always peered, and thought, but never responded. He hadn't spoken until he was almost four, but then in sentences. Her adoptive daughter left muddy footprints and broken glass, she drew pastel murals on the walls when she felt it was too dark. Their mother had saved all the tears and sighs and head-shakings she had never needed with Mark, for Angelina.

"Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails are what little _boys_are made of, Ange," she said as she picked splinters out of the minuscule fingers, and pulled leaves and twigs and washed mud and worms out of her hair. She used to put Ange's hair in tight french braids flat against her head.

Then Angelina took a neighbor boy into the woods for a picnic. The boys parents dragged a tear-streaked Angelina back to her house that afternoon, furiously explaining that she had dared their son to eat a caterpillar. In return, she'd been dared to make a crown out of thistles and burrs. So she'd been punished, and then it all had to go. She had gotten a bowl cut like her brother used to have, and was forever blowing her bangs out of her eyes. But still their mother couldn't keep her in the house.

He called her Leena, to her face, or Acorn when he wanted to watch her try to scowl. Mark used to imagine she was a changeling, from fairies or elves or pixies, and when she was very bad he told his mother in a stage whisper that she should stick her in the oven.

But when she was crying or very sick, he would call her _Angel, Angel, I love you_. He didn't know lullabies. It was the best he could do.

* * *

He was ten when they first brought her home, tiny and pointy with her fat fists and the temper that ran their mother ragged. When she finally left her to cry out, Mark finally went in to see the shrimpy bundle rolling around, uncomfortable and frustrated and wanting to see everything _rightnow_. She shook her tiny fists at him as he hesitantly lugged her into his arms.

"You're a real pain, you know," he informed her conversationally, after she bit his nose. He could have sworn her grey eyes started to glint, and they didn't stop glinting for twenty years. "Ok, this is home."

* * *

As soon as she could walk, she would run to him. And before she could walk, she stumbled, her face screwed up in concentration as she dragged her feet along the floor. He tried not to help her. When she fell down she was too impatient to be back up to cry much. But he had to be where she was, and she whined when he left the room without her. On her second birthday, she hugged onto his leg and said "Home. Home."

And just like that, he was hers. She never moderated or qualified, and that was how she loved.

* * *

When she was five, she said when they were both older she wanted to marry him. "Because I'm five and you're fifteen. But when I'm fifteen you'll be twenty-five. And then you'll be old and I'll be old and that's okay."

"Nuh uh, Acorn. You're my sister."

"But I'm _not_. Mommy didn't make me. I got grown in a garden and she picked me out like a tomato."

"But if you got grown in a garden, shouldn't you be a little oak tree?"

"Dummy!" she whirled her small fists at him, "The fairies planted me! And that means it doesn't count!"

He grabbed her, and let her wrestle him to the ground. Her wicked eyes look splintered and hurt and she was pummeling in anger instead of rough play. He held up his hands for her to punch against instead, but when she repeated herself, he closed his hands over hers. "Yeah it does, Leena."

His changeling stopped struggling. The fair folk were very jealous, and _no_was not safe for them to hear from what was theirs.

"But I love you!" the words burst out.

Her bewilderment hurt him. He stroked her dark, tomboy hair. "I love you too, Leena."

She pushed her head against his hand like a cat, then: "But I love you _most_!" she slammed her hands hard against his chest, "I want you all to myself!"

She stormed off into the woods in her cowboy boots and her tomboy hair. She didn't come back until late in the evening, her pockets full of bark and grassstains on Mark's old jeans and then she locked herself in the bathroom and threw up all the mushrooms she'd eaten on her picnic.

"Don't ever leave me." she whispered, once he'd made her promise not to go off alone again.

"Angel," he whispered, "Angel, I love you."

"Will you marry me?"

He poked her. "Meet any other fairies?"

"I found my real family. I had to eat those to go with them, cause they make you light so you can fly away."

"So why'd you puke?"

"Cause I'd miss you too much." she crawled into his arms.

"I'm not gonna leave you, Angel."

"Will you marry me?" her voice was muffled in his shirt. He put her back in bed and kissed her.

"Go the fuck to sleep."

* * *

When she was ten, her twelve-year-old classmate Samantha Maloney was found in the trunk of a car. He was home in a heartbeat, and they wrapped their arms around each other as she was loaded away, taking pieces of the knot of onlookers with them. Angelina's face was somber, taut, and pale, and there was no mischief, no adventure, in her fae eyes as she stared up and him and said "I'm scared."

He squeezed her very tightly and whispered to her. He registered to sit for Civil Service the next morning.

Angelina was the first one that had belonged to him. No one was going to take her away in the trunk of a car. No one was going to take away pieces of onlookers with her. Not without paying.

But one man had. And then, he had paid.

When Mark's head had stopped spinning and his body remembered how to breathe, he had leaned close to where she lay and choked _Angel, my Angel, I love you_ as he pressed her fae eyes closed and he didn't care that he would be covered in her blood. _I'll find him_, he whispered, as he sat down next to her body and let his hand trail over the place where her troublesome short bangs no longer fell.  
_  
Angel, I'll keep you safe... I'll protect you..._

When she left, she took her dues from her onlooker. He would have offered the world. Instead she took _safe_ and _protect_, and in their place she gave him _remembered_ and _avenge_.


	11. Pirate

A/N: This silly thing formed after Shawnee talked about what Amanda eats on the Saw III commentary track. As if Amanda didn't have enough issues. And yes, Jill is just fucking with her, as she could take pills or eat any number of normal foods to fix the problem. Amanda, John, Jill, and Hoffman aren't mine. (Still only one review but people are reading. Please review? Please please please please please?)

* * *

The Breakfast Table - Survival Of The Fittest - Midnight Snack

Amanda always been jittery, and high-strung, it was why she'd been a junkie for downers. But the last few weeks, her eyes were looking bloody no matter how much sleep she got, and a few times one of them had walked into the warehouse to find her flat on her face on the floor. "This is the only comfortable spot," she said, muffled by the concrete, and then waved them away.

She swore she wasn't using and there weren't any tracks or cuts. But John saw her sat in front of the blank monitors late one night, running her hands through her hair so that large clumps of hair came loose.

"What in the world are you eating?"

She held up her box of sugar-covered cheerios. Her fingers were powdered with the stuff. Littered on the desk were the detritus of her bleeding roast beef strips, processed cheese, chocolate wrappers, and energy drinks.

He hadn't paid much attention to what she ate; food was not foremost on either of their minds, but he at least remembered the proper times it should be done. His years with Jill had him in the habit of keeping full bowls of vegetables near his work surfaces, so he could eat without thinking and with one hand.

"You eat like an adolescent."

"Always in season," her smile seemed rather weak and unfocused, and he noticed something that made him lean in suddenly and take her by the chin.

"Open your mouth." startled, she obeyed, he pressed down her lip and saw small trickles of blood between her teeth, "Did you hit yourself?" she shook her head. He narrowed his eyes at her deconstructed pantry. Cheese, raw red meat, sugar, caffeine. Now that he thought about it...

John let out a long sigh.

"Stay there. And don't move."

* * *

An hour later, she was wincing at every touch as Jill moved her hands over her legs.

"Describe it, please."

"Like they're gonna explode," she said through gritted teeth. Jill looked at her eyes, in her mouth, in her loose hair. As she stood, she pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Didn't your mama ever tell you to eat your oranges?"

Amanda's eyes narrowed in confusion

"It's... well, it's... scurvy. Amanda,"

A long silence.

"So basically... I'm a pirate."

"Basically, you're getting no vitamin C. And not being a plant, you don't grow it yourself. And if you don't stop eating crap and don't metamorphosize into a plant, your teeth will fall out."

"Does that make you the pirate queen?"

"You need citrus. They used to call sailors 'lime juicers,' it's how captains prevented scurvy in the first place."

She stopped short, "_Lime_ juice?"

"I would advise," said Jill dryly, "At least eight ounces." She had thoughtfully brought along her own, and she poured it, Amanda's mouth puckered and went dry, and put it in front of her. Her lip twitched. Amanda looked around desperately.

"It's usually best if you just agree with her," said John, facing the wall, "It saves a lot of headache, and the same conclusion is reached."

"You're not gonna make me drink this?"

"Let me explain this condition more clearly. You have a disease that has not been widely reported since the Spanish-American war, that bursts capillaries, causes bleeding from mucous membranes, and destroys the body's ability to heal from injury, as well as inducing paralysis. This condition was last common and inevitable approximately two and a half centuries ago in the rat-infested brigs of packet ships and I, personally, would wish you a much more memorable end than rotting from the teeth inward as the result of overindulgence of frosted flakes and cheese whiz. So yes, Amanda, I am going to make you drink the goddamned juice, and I think it would be advisable if you were to obey every instruction Jill may give you until your hair is no longer falling off your head at whim or and you no longer have irrepressible urges to lie facedown on concrete floors to prevent your blood vessels from imploding."

Amanda pulled a face, held her nose, and drank it down in one.

* * *

"I reserve the right to bring up this day every hour like a goddamn egg timer for the rest of the year."

"Shut the hell up, Detective. Didn't you hear? I'm a motherfuckin pirate."


	12. Keen

A/N: I like Perez, and she's obviously smart and competent but is just overshadowed by Strahm being fake-Sherlock Holmes. Them both aren't mine (and neither is Cam Jansen, just for the record). Also, I decided the Saw universe was in Columbus, but I was re-watching Saw V and Strahm and Erickson's phones have a New York area code...

* * *

Covetousness - Cover To Cover - Discretion

Lindsey had always read too much. When she was three she had begun staring fixedly at the squiggling black shapes on the back of her father's paper as he sat in his suspenders at the breakfast table, willing them to come and fill her head. Whenever he caught her looking he would smile and pull out the comics to read to her, and while by the time she was four she knew Calvin and Hobbes by heart, it did not satisfy her.

As soon as she worked through her alphabet, she started to take her father's books, one at a time so they wouldn't be missed, into her room and hmm her way through the long passages. Whenever she saw someone about to throw away a newspaper, she would ask to have it instead, and with her sweet and crooked smile they always gave them to her.

By the time she could see kindergarten like a distant sunrise, she sat on her father's lap as he drank his coffee, turning the pages of his newspaper for him and chattering away as she learned the names of states and countries.

Lindsey's parents did not believe in hiding things from her. They were discrete, but not deceptive. When her father confronted her with his missing copy of _Bleak House_, and she handed it over guiltily, she mentioned that she hadn't seen the bookmark moved in weeks and she thought he wouldn't miss it. "You're right," He sighed as he handed it back, "Probably I'll die lying next to a pile of books I've been putting off reading." He knew she would have to guess sentences from the first page, but she would sit and read with the dictionary open at her side if she had to, and she would replace the words and read the book out loud to anyone who would listen. She was not a receptacle, she was an artist. She took in and pieced together and repurposed what she read.

When she was seven, she took aptitude tests along with another girl in her class after they were neck-in-neck for the school spelling bee. The other girl fell in the 99th percentile up to the ninth grade level, but Lindsey only made it to seventh. Lindsey's teacher told her the girl had a special kind of memory, like a camera, and that she could remember everything she had seen in a picture or on a page because she took a photo with her brain. Lindsey had seen the girl looking at maps during their geography lessons, had seen her close her eyes and whisper into her hand as she committed them to memory.

"I want to have a memory like a camera." she said earnestly, "So I can never forget anything."

Her teacher smiled, and said her classmate had been born that way, but that Lindsey should be very proud of how well she had done and how smart she was.

When she got home, she crawled into her father's lap. He was reading _Bleak House_, finally, and he shifted the book into one hand so he could tuck his daughter under his arm. "So, my little prodigy, how old is your brain?"

"Twelve," she said into his shirt.

"You sound disappointed." he remarked, his eyes moving steadily down the page.

"The other girl's brain is smart even for a fourteen-year-old," she sulked, "Mozart was writing symphonies by the time he was my age."

"If that's the way you look at it, my love, you'll never be proud of anything you do. You know how many grownups have trouble with this book?" he tapped _Bleak House_ with a broad forefinger and grimaced slightly. Then he tucked Lindsey's head under his chin, "You know how proud I am of you?"

"But I want to be a genius, Papa." she whispered, "Wouldn't you be more proud if I was a genius?"

He set aside his book, drew back from his daughter, and lifted her chin. Lindsey had her mother's unruly dark curls and olive skin, her gentle smile and her impatient brilliance, but her blue-grey eyes and the stubborn, relentless, steady intelligence they contained came from him.

"Listen to me, Lindsey. I want you to learn as much as you can, and when you grow up I hope you find a job you love that just makes you come alive, and I hope you get married and give me lots of grandchildren and that you never stop reading. I want you to be as smart and as happy as you can possibly be. But when you're an old lady, Lindsey, it would make be proudest to know that you were _wise_, that you were worldly and kind and inspired people to learn and grow. Geniuses aren't happy people, it's hard for them to connect to the people around them, because they're too busy in their heads. Wisdom is also in the heart."

* * *

It wasn't that Peter didn't have a heart, she knew. It was that he acted like it could only lead astray. He was a genius, and he wasn't happy. He was restless and impatient in his reason. At almost every crime scene, facts presented or surrendered themselves to him, forming conclusions under his conscious thought, and what was distracting his waking mind was his desire for a challenge.

Lindsey's studiousness sometimes amused him, sometimes irritated him. He would sit on the edge of her desk with his arms folded, clicking his pen incessantly, or take pictures off her desk and fiddle with them, or lean over the back of her chair to read over her shoulder, his tie swinging in her face. He would point out every mistake in her reports with his mouth too close to her ear, and then he would pace. It didn't surprise her at all to learn he had trouble sleeping, with the sheer number of facts that buzzed and chased each other around his head. She learned early to make sure any coffee after ten was decaf.

She came in to work one morning to find him walking in circles around her desk, flexing his hands and rolling and unrolling a memo in his hands.

"What are you so excited about?" she asked as she set down her things.

"Jigsaw," he murmured, thrusting the creased memo at her.

"The serial killer in Columbus?"

"The serial kidnapper, tinkerer, torturer, sick sort of tester of the human spirit in Columbus."

"Semantics. What about him?"

"The cops are out of their depth."

"Big shock." she perused the memo. It was a copy of a message sent by Kerry, the lead detective on the Jigsaw murders.

"They can't find him. _And_ they don't know who's helping him."

She saw the case file open on her desk, "And you do."

Confused frustration creased his face, "Of course. Amanda Young, his first survivor. But we're being called in soon."

The way Peter relished the opportunity to show up a task force of detectives made Lindsey smile. He did not leave soon enough to miss the next memo that came through. Lindsey read it through three times without the meaning quite penetrating her numb feeling of dread.

"What?" he asked, leaning over her shoulder, too close.

"It's Kerry."

The details were still on their way to her nerves as Peter snatched away the memo and processed it quickly. Kerry had been found. Lindsey could no longer call herself a rookie, but she still felt twinges when they got news like this. A sense of a wrong that she could help fix some small part of.

And she still felt horrified by the familiar look of manic expectation that meant _challenge accepted_ on her partner's face.


	13. Trauma

A/N: Rigg, Kerry, and Hoffman don't belong to me. In case anyone cares, I'm putting off writing Hoffman / Jill kismesis because it's weird imagining him out of control.

* * *

Rained Out - Back In The Saddle - Badge

Rigg knocked quietly on her door, waited ninety seconds, and then knocked again, louder. When a minute had passed with still no answer, he began to hammer.  
"Kerry, if you don't get your ass to the door in one minute, I'm breaking it down," he said it with fairly limited hysteria, given how close to the edge they all were. He had a hot head when his partners were coming to work and no one was kidnapped and lost.

Her footsteps were soft, and then her shadow stopped. He could tell that she had put her back against the door, that she was thinking hard about letting him in, that she might even be armed. "Rigg?"

"Open the door, Kerry," he said, more softly, placing his palm against the door, at the place where her voice seemed strongest. It creaked open, and when he stepped inside it was to find her behind it, her gun pointed downward at her side, her legs braced as if she were about to run. With a sigh as he snapped the door shut, she disassembled her weapon and placed it back into her dresser. He followed her into her room, and placed his hands on her shoulders. Kerry froze, trying to breathe.

"Three knocks," he said, "Today's pretty bad, huh?"

Kerry's curly hair seemed frizzy and dull. He knew she pulled it and ran her fingers through it when she fretted. He walked around to face her. Her face was hard and could be read as haughty, but never inscrutable. He searched it for the lines and fractures filled with fear for Eric Matthews. She met his eyes steadily, trusting him to see it and share it and treat her as he always did.

"You eat anything?"

Her mouth twitched, "It's been awhile."

"Do I want to know?"

"Nope." she sat down gingerly on her bed, "How's Tracy?"

He sighed, "It's been awhile. Come on," he held out his hand and she took it, swinging it slightly as she got to her feet, "Let's get something in you. No one's gonna chloroform us over steak."

"Probably."

"That's what I meant."

* * *

That was their routine, Rigg and Kerry. Every weekend, one would go to the other's house and bang on the door until they answered, hug tightly, and then eat, trying to talk as if this was a normal case, with faceless victims and killers they stood a chance of catching. Tracy eyed Kerry suspiciously the first few times this happened, and asked questions of her husband that suggested a barb when he went to her apartment and took her to dinner, but after four months had gone by she dropped it.

Whoever's turn it was to be strong, they would take the other's hand when their partner looked away and toyed with their food, and they would say, "This isn't your fault."

* * *

"I can only be as optimistic as the facts allow," his friend said, later on. Hoffman wasn't a physical person, he used space and the lack of it to communicate closeness rather than actual touches. But he put his hand on Rigg's shoulder when he said that, his tone suggesting but not betraying regret. The facts of his position, and his responsibility, was what he meant, but Rigg didn't often contemplate double meanings.


	14. Shadows

A/N: Set during Saw VI. Jill has her box, and she is contemplating what to do with it. She, John, and Hoffman (who seems to be coming up waaaay too much) are not mine. Jessi, for what it's worth, is.

* * *

Burnt Out - New And Improved - Exhaustion

She still had her clinic, and she still had her successes. But now she was a picture in a magazine covered and filled with his face. Not John's face, with his eyes like a lighter shade of Jill's, eyes that appraised and gently compelled, but the face of a killer, of a torturer, of a depraved and insane mind rotted with cancer. She was enfolded again into the center of his life, with no escape from prying eyes and their mistrustful aversion. And everywhere she was his wife, not his ex. Not someone who had suffered his dejection and withdrawal, and had made a clear decision, but as someone who kept returning and had never made up her mind, or worse, as someone who knew every secret and was too afraid or too loyal or too easily seduced. She had made up her mind for four and a half years. She told herself her failure at the end was because she did not want him to die with no sense of his past. She wanted him to die as _John_.

Perhaps it wasn't so unfair after all. She poured another glass of wine. She leaned back against her round table, and as she drank she restarted the tape.

_"We love you, son, we're waiting for you..."_

The first time she had watched, she had only sat transfixed, and the second time she had wept. The third time she had watched the movement of those three characters in pantomime: Jill waving, John putting his arm around her to get them all in frame. The fourth time, she had watched their eyes. Hazel and blue, and radiant. Whose eyes would he have had? Now, the fifth time, with her fourth glass, she was watching their hands. Jill's eyes caught the plastic band on her wrist, darted as she paused the tape to the calcium spots on her nails. And then she watched John's.

The same hands that held the camera for their son in that elaborate pantomime, in that life so remote and so simple it seemed like a feeble joke, had fitted together the terrible machine that sat beside her. She knew at once what it was, because she heard Amanda's voice in her ears, _"All I could taste was blood, and metal..."_ but it seemed smaller, cleaner, more streamlined. It looked vicious in its simplicity. And as she lifted it from its careful wrappings, she felt a terrible thrill. As she brushed her fingers along the edges of the dreadful, surgical precision of John's hands, all she could see reflected in it was the blood that would soon stain her skin. She saw at once how one of them must die. She knew what must be in the envelope before she slit it open. She had asked John to give her a way out, and here it was.

Jill was supposed to test John's lieutenant, Mark Hoffman, to see if he was fit to carry on the legacy. But Jill knew him too well, and she imagined a terrible pain splitting her own face as her fingers clenched on the polished metal. One of them had to die, and if she failed, John's dragon was too poetic to refuse.

The tape began to stutter as her shaking fingers fumbled the buttons, and restarted it._ "We love you, son..."_ Her hands were still shaking as she set them back against the table and downed her glass in one. She picked up the terrible trap and threw it to the floor. It sprang open with a deafening crash, its pointed teeth grinning horribly at her like a hungry lion.

It was too much. She could come home from work and say that their troubles were hers until the sun went down, even if it was sometimes a lie, and she could have her life. But this was too much, too much relied on her choice and hers alone. She could tell no one, but if she stayed quiet too long, she knew he would kill her. John was "long gone from this world," and now there were no checks on a man with everything to prove and nothing to lose. He had ensured the death of John's second love, Amanda. And he would think Jill, as a part of John's shadow world, the last pall on his conscience.  
Jill picked up the phone and her fingers tripped over the number she knew by heart, though she only called it on her goddaughter's birthday, or from the hospital.

"Jill?" the chirp in her voice was muffled with sleep. Jill tried hard to steady her voice. But after dark, her facade would not reemerge. "Jill, what's wrong?"

She was struggling not to do something stupid, like cry. She was going to need all her strength for what she was about to say. The woman on the other end of the line was twisting the cord tightly around her arm. She listened to Jill, the woman she loved more than any other, the woman who had taught her to be strong, in pieces on her phone, and her heart broke.

"You ready to admit you need someone, _salvadora_?"

At the sound of her nickname, Jill forced down the tears. Jessi was trying to be the strong one. She couldn't let her go into her love and loyalty blind.

"Jessi," she began, "I need to do something, very soon. Something... awful. Something I don't really understand."

"What do you need?" Jessi asked urgently, "Jill, are you drunk?"

"Very," whispered Jill earnestly, "It doesn't change what I need. Jessi, do you trust me?"

There was a pause. Jessi wound the phone cord tighter around her arm, as tears began to prick her eyes. "You don't need to ask that. You know I do."

"Then I need you to leave here. I need you to take Johnny and Savannah and Michael and leave town. Get as far away from me as you can."

"Jill, you're scaring me."

"I'm scaring myself. But what I'm about to do... Jessi, you and your family are the only ones anymore that I'm sure I love. And you're...if something goes wrong..." she tried again, "After what you've done, after what I've helped you do... I could never forgive myself if...if..."

"Jill..." Jessi kept her voice low and ironed out the tremor. She wasn't so much younger than Jill as she once was. She was a mother, she had been clean for fourteen years, and she felt she was entitled, now she was able. "Jill, is someone after you? Do you want me to get help?"

Jill's hollow laugh startled her, "Police can't help."

And then Jessi understood. In a whirl of color, she saw the precarious scaffold on which her friend stood. She saw that night, ten years ago, when a man in her bar had bought Jill her regular, and she saw the lurid magazines about John Kramer that pressed Jill's eyes closed. She saw Jill's fear. The police couldn't help. Jessi bit down hard on her hand.

"I didn't say anything about the police."

* * *

Jill threw her glass into the sink before she could finish the bottle, and then sat down next to that obscenely polished instrument that was the reason John _deeply believed in her_... she stopped the tape, she pulled the contraption onto her lap, and began to take it apart. First she closed it and let it drop, then she took out the spring and replaced it. Only a step at a time. But by the time dawn broke and her eyes were dry and her head was clear, she could assemble it in her sleep.

The knock on her door almost made her scream, but her violent start did not trigger that savage grin. It was _too soon_... But the knock was soft, it was secret, it was only for her. It seemed to tap in morse code that she shouldn't be afraid.

Jill took a knife from the kitchen. As she pulled open the door, Jessi pushed her back inside.

"Where-?" Jill stumbled.

"Indiana."

"With-"

"Johnny's aunt."

"What-"

"What do you think? And don't ask why," she said, sharply and preemptively. "Because I'm not going to ask you. I'm going to make a choice in a minute. Tell me if you're trying to keep this going."

Jill's eyes moved, very carefully, over every inch of her face. "No. I'm trying to stop it."

"That's what I thought." Jessi was not the girl who had come to her so earnestly fifteen years ago, not the one who had to be shaken from hallucinations and always looked over her shoulder. But she also wasn't the woman Johnny thought he had married.

Her eyes glinted hard with the same resolution they had when she had said _I don't want to be my mother_, and her words now were the same as then.

"Then tell me what to do."


	15. Betrayed

A/N: Normally I like to pretend that Saw 3D doesn't exist for a number of reasons. My headcanon ends with Saw VI because I like even numbers and Jill Tuck alive and sympathetic gauntlet runners. Regardless, Bobby and Joyce Dagen aren't mine.

* * *

The Darkest Hour - Long Way Down - Just Out Of Reach

Falling from obedient trust, she hit betrayal with the same force that he hit the stone floor, tender strips and scars of love tearing and shredding from the bearing the weight of his lie, of her shame, of her unwavering belief that he would save her.

"I love you, Joyce. I never lied about that."

She knew he loved her. She saw the kinds of sacrifices he had made. He had tried to save her. But the man she thought he was would not have needed to.

She heard bones crack and muscles scream as he fell into a heap. _So what was I to you, Bobby? Just something you won?_

His eyes were dazed as he managed to turn to face her. The numbers of the timer counted down implacably in them. He staggered to his feet. There was blood flowing from the punctured scar over his heart. His tears flowed for her, his heart bled for her. A whole lot of good that did now. She had followed him blindfolded into the minefield. Now his hand had been torn away, and now that she could see she had already heard that casually sinister _click_.

Joyce looked away from her husband. She thought of all the nights in bed when she had fingered those scars, those pale knots of memory made flesh as he moaned her name. She thought of the night after his book signing, when he'd come home a shaking wreck and she'd sat up the night with him, stroking his face and assuring him that one day, _one day_, this would be behind him. He had said nothing.

She watched herself from the outside as he must have done. A beautiful woman full of quiet sympathy for his suffering and quiet pride to be holding his hand on national television. He had filtered for a woman like her: pretty and sympathetic and adoring and waiting in the corner for him to smile at her, and looking for all the world like she would go above and beyond for him. She was a perfect accompaniment with her straight white smile and her humble eyes. As radiant and legitimizing as a gold medal around his neck, given the same polish and place of honor, and the same consideration of worth.

Joyce felt sick with the speed at which these thoughts of loathing coursed through her. She was about to die, and part of her would have given anything to have never learned this, to have had him burst in here just too late so she could die feeling her way through his anguished eyes into his heart, and have lived there forever. But as she screamed, she lifted her hand and jerked her wedding ring off her finger.

_For when I'm dead, Bobby. I hope you notice the difference._

She shut her eyes tight as she threw it, as the red numbers hit zero in his shocked and traitorous eyes. She did not want to think that in the pages of his next memoir, she would live forever.

Instead, she thought as the flames came alight in her prison, about how she would have liked to cut out her heart and throw it along with her ring from the burned wreckage of her body. At the very last, she remembered that of old the charred bones found in brazen bulls shone like jewels and were made into bracelets for their executioners.

_Wear me well, Bobby_.


	16. Blood

A/N: Jill and Hoffman are not mine. They exist in a lovely universe crafted by Leigh Whannell, James Wan, Gregg Hoffman, Patrick Melton, and other lovely beings. The framing quote in () is from Frankenstein. Also, Hoffman has a fascist belt. And if you understood that reference please PM me immediately so we can be best friends.

* * *

Give Me One Good Reason - If It Ain't Broke - Brainwashing

(_I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine..._)

He did not look at Angelina much anymore. Her portrait was for appearances, for all those who knew what he would have done for her, and the few who knew what he had done after her. He couldn't think of her, because thinking of her bled him dry. John delusions hid some truth for him. If the heart was involved, then every trap closed on it, every spike pierced it, every winch ripped it apart.

His aim had never been to end that pain.

Leena killed fireflies in glass jars and caterpillars with parsley, and her gray eyes splintered with tears,_ I didn't mean to!_ But she didn't like to be told she had to let go of these lovely things, these trinkets she had gathered up in her traveler's pockets, these flecks of starlight and those furled curtains. All the hurt she gave was blind.

His was never. But he had to help her, to stop his changeling from hurting and crying. He had to set free the things she took and teach her to care. So he hid away what was never blind, because Leena's love meant more to him than feeling alive.

(_And rage in me the likes of which you would not believe..._)

Every day weighed more on Jill. Her bones were not glass like Amanda's, she didn't let John's death or their secrets fold her like a sapling. She was not a tool, a material, a project. She refused. When she broke, she would collapse like a dam, and she would drag to drowning the ones who broke her.

(_If I cannot satisfy one..._)

Love had been chased and beaten out of them. It tore them along ragged stitches, and the only cure was hate.

His distaste for Amanda had cauterized nothing, it was lingering duty and age at odds. Her disdain for him was slight fear and delusion and her childish need for applause. Their snarls and flexing claws did not satisfy, because they were not fighting for anything expressible.

They played by different rules in the shadow world. The spasms of agony that crossed her face in his mind were not to silence her. His sole business with her was not made bearable by them, as it had been with Amanda.

For her part, the anger and fear she wanted from him was a masking agent. Methadone for what had fled her. She was no longer searching for something to bring her to life. But one of them could quicken death.

(_I will indulge the other..._)

"That's not a request,"

"I didn't expect one," she tossed them onto the desk, "I have work to do."

"They can wait."

"They need me. You can wait."

His eyes flickered as they understood one another. No dismissal, no barb. There was something open and mutual in the shadows of their words. They did not expect requests. They did not hope for mercy or resolution or attrition.

He made his plans quietly until everyone but she forgot he was there, and before she locked the last door she came back.

His hands closed on the envelope of women as she shut the door behind her, all business as she replaced her white coat. He watched one set of cares lifted from her shoulders as she pulled her hair loose, and he could see so clearly the ends of every bone of her chest pushing through ragged flesh to meet his fingers.

"I don't suppose I have a choice," she was speaking to, and for, them both.

"You could choose to enjoy it."

There would be no need to break her neck, to freeze or paralyze, he wanted her suffering to read across her body. He had never seen her hazel eyes fevered, splintered, anything but gently compelling, but as she turned them to him he ached for every sound he could extract from her cold mouth.

"Come here."

And it took him a long moment to realize she, not he, had issued the first command. She branded his neck and tasted his blood in the time it took for him to cross the small room and wrap his belt around her wrist. There was nothing cold or controlled about the way she stood her ground as they heard bones snapping and blood singing, nothing gentle about her voice as she ripped her neck out of his grip, nothing forgiving about her mouth as they caught each other and started to draw blood. He wanted to choke her and drink from her. It was what he had waited for.

Something had lit in his eyes as she followed his momentum. They weren't sharp like crystals but she saw blue burning like poison in them, instead of the closed colorless tunnels she knew.

Jill was not quite beyond caring that he wanted John's past as well as his future. She was a test like everyone else, though she doubted whether John would have approved of Hoffman's concept of victory.

They played by different rules in the shadow world. Even with her wrist strangling in his hand he had a wild urge to get on his knees in front of her. They were biting to bruise and she was so warm. He filled his hands with her as he forced her around, belt forgotten a moment at her side. He wanted his hands around her throat and in her mouth and buried in her warm folds as she bled from all the broken bones. He wanted her breathing heavy and thick with tears as she spasmed around him. He told her so as he tore her out of clothes and skin.

_You will give everything to me, every cell in your body, is that understood?_ It floated through fever before he could stop it. The way her mouth twisted in a snarl made him want to taste her fear.

"Don't fool yourself," she whispered. He knew it had stung her nonetheless. He thought for John she might have been soft and yielding. His grief when Hoffman had seen him touch her a dead echo of that tenderness.

He started into her, barely caught her hiss as she told him to moan. He told her to scream. When she did he stroked her hard, their warmth blurring together. Her lips had gone numb. She told him she wanted to hang him from wires tangled in his hair, crush him with a vice of spears.

His hand paused, she felt her arm jerk and heard a laugh and a snarl tinge the moan in his heavy breath. "You can do better than that," he hissed. The pictures of her, torn and bloody, were making his vision swim like whiskey. The feel of her turning rough around him was making him press his face against her neck, wanting her breath for his. "Come on... what do you want to do to me?"

And she was beginning to say, so hushed and so consuming, that she wanted to strip the skin from his arms and unravel the fibers of every muscle, to taste his sweat and warm her fingers in him and tell him only she could hear him scream. _That's it..._

He was willing her to break first, and she knew it. They forced each other's hands and he pushed harder and harder against her front and back, weighing on this obsession and wild blood, feeling so painfully alive. She wouldn't, and he was spent inside her before he could push through her last hushed defense. She was trying not to shake against the wall as their fingers relaxed, then curled, ever so slightly.

He leaned against her with his fingers relaxed over hers, holding another wild desire to kneel and rest his mouth against her. It occurred to him that he hadn't really seen her face since he'd turned her against the wall, only those terrible snapshots. He turned away as she regained her balance, took a handful of tissues and scraped and swiped. She wondered vaguely if he had made her bleed.

"You should get started," she told him, her voice pulling its shaking fragments together as she dressed, almost retrieving her white coat before she checked the time and shook her head distractedly. Her eyes were cooling again into that impersonal, searching gentleness. His hatred stretched the boundaries of his controlled silence. He wanted desperately to hit her, to take another deep, bloody kiss, anything but watch her draw back without a trace of that feverish, fractured loathing. He wanted her to come with him. She read it before he had composed, and sighed. She opened the door.

"Please," she said clearly, "Do what he wanted."

"John's dead. What he wanted isn't your concern."

She shook her head. Her smile was very, very tired.


	17. Comfort

A/N: Laura and Daniel and Amanda aren't mine. It's awesome that people are reading this (it's got almost 600 views), and if you do I'd love a quick review telling me what you thought.

* * *

Wipeout - Red Alert - Doubt

Daniel thought they could have been friends, in some other place. They could have had a beer and joked about the cars they'd jack if they had a hideout. They could have gone out for paintball, and he could have played tough and then awkwardly kissed her dry lips on the walk home while their colors melded and bruises flowered. They could have laughed and decided they were better as friends.

Laura was shivering and pale and cloudy-eyed and bloody. He guessed she had made up her mind to die when that first spray of blood and bone drenched her. She had made up her mind not to live with what she knew she would see and feel and do.

"This can't be it," she whispered, her voice was slurred and hopeless.

He took her hand and started to rub it between his, brought it to his mouth and blew on her fingers, like his mom did for frostbite. "It's not," She smiled at him. "We gotta keep moving, can you stand up?"

"Probably," she said. She sagged forward, he put his hand on her back, then she sat back against the wall and groaned, ever so faintly. "But I don't want to,"

"C'mon, I'll help you," he started to shake her hand gently, "Laura c'mon."

She shook her head, drowsily, against the wall. _Thump, thump, thump_. She looked like a child asking for five more minutes, her eyes looking every bit as lost a sleepwalker woken from a dream by an unfamiliar face. His hands shaking, Daniel blew on her fingers again, helplessly.

"Laura, this isn't it," he was starting to beg, "This can't be it, remember?"

"All these games," she mumbled as she put her arm around Daniel's shoulders and let him guide her to her feet, "We're all just gonna die tired,"

"Maybe we should think of them as quests," he suggested, wrapping his arm around her waist with a reassuring squeeze, and trying hard to think of beer cans and stolen cars, paintball and uncertain kisses on sunny afternoons.

An hour later, he was trying again.

"C'mon," he was whispering desperately, trying to shake her off the wall her body seemed to fold into, "C'mon Laura, get up, we've gotta move. There's still a chance. We've still got a chance,"

"Nah, Daniel," her words were very quiet and all at once, as though she was trying to save as many precious breaths as she had left, like words for a lover, "I think I've seen enough."

"There's so many people you gotta talk to."

"I'm talking to you," her eye's were a child's again as she coughed. She pulled his arm around her. "Let's just sit for a little while."

He let her put her head on his shoulder and trail off into ragged breaths about stepping out of jail into the hot sun with her mother and her sister. And then Amanda found them and she put Laura's head in her lap for that last, dire minute. Daniel felt a little as if he'd known her.


	18. Sunrise

Disclaimer: Tracey, Rigg, Morgan, Rex, and Jane do not belong to me. This is Tracey and Morgan together... for some reason. I don't ship them, I just thought it would be an interesting challenge because of their husbands' history.

* * *

Like They Used To - Don't Wait Up For Me - I've Got Your Back

Women didn't book motel rooms that let them charge by the hour. Johns did that, cheating husbands did that, the men that aided the affairs took that job, always. Wives didn't do it. Wives met in parks and coffee shops when their husbands weren't around or looked away, or they went to the place where it had begun.

Their husbands had come home to them after it had begun, Rigg with bruised knuckles and Rex quickly bruising his own on Morgan's cheek, while Jane cast down her eyes from the corner, shivering with the screams that had died out months ago, looking at the bruises flowering on her own arms, blue and yellow. Blue and yellow like a sunrise.

Tracy and Morgan got ice and asked no questions. Tracy nursed her husband's hot temper with empty words when he collapsed next to her in bed and pulled her close. He didn't know how much it hurt when he held her that tight, and she didn't tell him. When he didn't kiss her but let his skin sear her, his muscles seep beneath her flesh and clutch at her heart and her lungs and her spine, crushing the acid from her stomach, the fluid from her vertebra, bile into her veins, and using all she had to fuel something dark and hidden. He was a man who saw little use in subtlety and hidden meanings. It made him blunt and brave and reckless, and she couldn't let him know how fluid were the boundaries between him and what he hated. If he knew what stared into him, those boundaries would blur.

_If you don't discipline a child, you don't love them, _Jane whispered to herself._ Daddy loves me, Daddy loves Mommy, Daddy loves me... but why you?_

_Because Mommies do wrong things too, dear. Some people don't understand that._

_What about when Daddies do wrong things?_

Morgan tucked her daughter's hair gently into its two braids. She could have said any number of things. Instead she told Jane not to worry. Mommy and Daddy would worry. That was their job and they would look after her. She did not say protect. Even in the absence of a promise, it tasted too bitter in her mouth to be true. She kissed her daughter on the cheek, and when Jane kissed her back, she kissed her new bruise. Morgan did not wince.

It was predictable, how they met. The classroom held no answers for Rigg and kept no secrets, but he returned there, and Tracy followed him and fought with him and eventually threw a coat over him and brought him home. One night, Morgan returned there too, rocking on the edge of that choice, for it had been a conscious choice, this slow death of herself and her daughter, and when Tracy came there weary, with shadows under her dark eyes, their eyes met. Morgan left, and Tracy followed. She had screamed at the older woman, screamed about the daughter with the sunrise bruises on her neck and the fresh bruise on Morgan's cheek and her fluid and dangerous husband, wanting to save them both, and yet hating them. Morgan had taken the blows with steel in her eyes. She had resignation and Tracy had only fear. There was a strength in Morgan while the younger woman had only ferocity. There was pity from her, where Tracy had only disbelieving anger. Neither would have changed places with the other.

They returned a few times more, to this beginning place. And they began picking each other out in places where their lives intersected. And then Tracy saw her on a park bench, determinedly staring in the opposite direction, watching her daughter Jane playing frisbee, and she sat down close next to her and put her arm around the older woman's shoulders. Morgan's fingers closed slowly and deliberately around Tracy's hand, and her face seemed splintered and raw with an odd, helpless happiness.

The actual affair was brief. Morgan wanted to wrap up this one thing Rex would never learn or touch, this piece of selfish happiness. She had tainted happiness too, of course, such as that brought by raising her daughter, but the selfish and secret pockets were sources of strength rather than duty. Sometimes it was in a classroom and sometimes in the park, and the touching was always very deliberate and gentle. They had enough urgency at home. The friendship lingered. It was Morgan who convinced her to end her note with "I love you."

Tracy asked her only once why she stayed. Morgan told her in no uncertain terms that the people who asked her those kinds of questions did not deserve simple answers, but she wouldn't wish a deserving state on anyone.


	19. Laqueus

A/N: Lawrence, Allison, and Diana don't belong to me, just so we're clear. And obviously since Lawrence has gone to the dark side by the time of this chapter, I have to acknowledge that Saw 7 exists as canon. Le sigh.

* * *

Pep Talk - Lace - A Contest

* * *

Diana touched the long ringlets around her face, and felt her mother's hands trembling on her shoulders as she looked up into the mirror. She realized she hadn't seen her mother cry since her father had first come home, for the days before had been blurred by tears and terror and since then, they had been lectured about how they ought to feel nothing but grateful to be alive. But now Allison was crying silently as she fussed with Diana's necklace and bangles, as, her voice breaking, she promised her daughter that she would always have a family and a home as long as Allison was above ground, as she lightly kissed her daughter's painted cheek and squeezed her shoulders and prepared to let her slip through her fingers. Diana was very quiet, but between them they felt her brief moment of unclouded happiness. Allison's words came from years of silence, but they were not necessary. Mother and daughter felt the warmth and reveled in it.

Then there was a soft knock on the door. Diana tightened very slightly at the soft shuffle behind her. She did not turn fully around, but instead looked at his reflection in the mirror from where she stood trembling on her pedestal. "Hi, Daddy."

Lawrence looked into his daughter's formerly plump and plain face. Her eyes had bulged as a little girl, but now they looked confident and warm inset in her dark skin. Her mother had gone to great pains to make her straight, coarse hair wend its way docilely over pins and ribbons in tendrals.

"Lawrence," said Allison in a tense voice, approaching him with her hands outstretched, tired and angry and placatory _Not now._.. she fumed mutely. She did not want him near her just now. Lawrence had made them believe he would do anything to come home to them, but once home they once again became means to an end. A different end.

Diana ran her hands nervously over her dress as her parents argued with the daggers in their eyes. After awhile, as soon as Diana felt the first rivulet of sweat trickling out of her elaborately set hair, threatening to mar her mother's painstaking makeup, Allison made a silent concession, but deliberately left the door open as she stood aside for her ex-husband. Lawrence approached Diana with his slow, deliberate limp, his cane punctuating the skips and lurches of her heart.

He seemed to be blinking mechanically, as though he were reminding himself to do it to pass. A smile spread across his face in that same slow, automatic way as he reached out his hand to his daughter's and patted it gently.

"You look so beautiful, Diana. You're as beautiful as your mother." It was only true when she smiled, they both knew that. She wasn't smiling now. Her father was square, heavy, and stiff as he eased himself into the chair beside her vanity, as he unwrapped the small package that contained the lattice veil Allison had worn on their wedding day and beckoned her to him to slip the comb into Diana's hair.

But though he made a few passing comments about Ryan being a good man and about being honest and loving, the scene was a quarter turn off. Nothing Lawrence was saying seemed to reach his eyes, which were not precisely cold but which did not seem quite to see her. He was not awkwardly avoiding her gaze nor pretending to have sand in his eyes, he had not prepared a lecture and it wasn't as though he had come out of duty or not at all. He simply seemed tired, a little too world-weary for what he could safely say in mixed company he had been through.

_How could you leave us, Daddy? You promised._

As the silence stretched, she did not know whether she had spoken aloud, but whether he heard her or read it in her face, he seemed to shake himself awake. Her parents had often fought without words, near the end, Lawrence clamped silent because he no longer wanted to hurt them, Allison because she needed a challenger to feel right.

_I thought you loved us more than anything. I thought you were coming home._

_But you can't, sweetheart. You can't come home from something like that. Soldiers can't look at peace the same way._

_Can't you __**stop**__?_

She didn't realize until she was stemming the tears in earnest, but she had not been able to keep the last word to herself. Her father's face fell a little as he eased himself up from the chair, and made his slow progress to where his daughter stood like a music box ballerina, shivering on her springs and pedestal. He couldn't make many trips back into her world. He couldn't place the scales back onto his eyes. But for the sake of her, on this day alone, he could try. He practiced a different deceit these days, but for the sake of the love of an old life.

He took her hand between both of his, and for the span of the words he spoke, his eyes seemed human.

"I'm so sorry that I hurt you."

_Hurt_ was both past and present tense of the word. He was sorry for the past harm out of arrogance and ignorance, and the harm he would continue to do, knowingly and sorrowfully and with a wisdom she did not and could never understand.

"How much do I love you?" he asked, and a little-girl smile lit her face as she laced their fingers.

"_Love you very much_," they said together, and that was the last echo he could allow. He kissed her on the cheek, gently arranged her veil over her face, and was gone again.


End file.
